[The cover focuses on Black Opal II removing her featureless
black helmet to reveal a featureless black face underneath
as the Morning Stars look on in concern and horror.]

____________________________________________________________________________
.|, COHERENT COMICS PRESENTS An ASH Universe Story
--+-------------------------------------------------------------------------
'|` SHADOW GIRLS #13 - Breakdown (Forging the Sword Part 1)
copyright 2024 by Dave Van Domelen
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The Morning Stars

Tetra-Red Xueli "Julie" Li - The Leader
Hexa-Blue Tamica "Tammy" Sullivan - The Brains
Octa-Green Dhriti "Tee" Singh - The Fighter
Dodeca-Yellow Jessica "Jess" Davies - The Scout
Icosa-Pink Olivia "Liv" Stuart - The Heart
Black Opal II Madelyn "Maddie" Chin - The Mentor

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[July 5, 2027 - Plato's Cave]

A sort of dry pain filled every millimeter of Maddie's body as she swam
up out of dark dreams, like the worst allergy headache she'd ever had but
spread out over everything, like grit in her joints and sand under her skin.
Memories started to return, and she reached up to touch her sternum.
Warm, smooth metal, flush to her skin at the edges. Geometric
depressions spaced evenly across it.
"She's awake!" someone said. Julie? There was a crackling sussuration
in her ears, like static, but the voice came through clearly anyway.
She decided to dare opening her eyes, then immediately regretted it as
she was stunned by five pillars of colored flame...or at least that's what
they looked like.
She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed them. "Everything...hurts..." she
managed to mutter.
Maddie tried opening her eyes just a crack...still too bright, but the
girls had more of a blurry glow around them than a roaring arc flare now.
"Still too bright. Worst hangover ever...."
"Bright? But we're all covered in shadows?" Julie again, she was pretty
sure, said.
"The integration of the pectoral may have had effects beyond the
obviously visible cosmetic ones," Tammy replied. "We could all feel when she
put it on, she may be able to 'see' our power now? It's a hypothesis worth
testing," she shrugged, and suddenly the blue glow faded to a faint tinge.
Tammy had clearly been watching for whatever Maddie's reaction was, because
she added, "Everyone power down."
Within moments, the room lighting was back to normal, and most of that
sandy, ashy feeling under Maddie's skin had gone away as well. With the
overwhelming sensory input from the girls' power tamped down, Maddie could
feel her remaining aches more clearly, mostly a headache and a burnt
sensation from her chest. The chest was obvious, as she looked down and saw
the pectoral had indeed fused flush with her skin, the chain having fallen
off at some point in the process. Her head...some of that was power
hangover, but a tenderness on the back of her skull suggested that at some
point she'd fallen over and hit her head on something hard. Desk, floor,
didn't make much difference. She'd waken up, so it wasn't fatal, and until
she could be sure she could hide the pectoral a doctor was out of the
question anyway. Maybe Jessa had someone discreet.
"Good, you'll live," a very annoyed-looking Jess said. "Now what the
hell did you do, and why shouldn't I kick your ass over it? I was halfway
through making a jump and nearly took a dive off a twelve story building."
Maddie levered herself up, wincing at the tenderness in her chest.
"You'd all gone over the edge. The gems were making you crazy, and at least
a couple of you were a heartbeat away from rushing back into battle to get
killed."
"And what does...that," Tee gestured at Maddie's chest, "have to do with
any of it?"
"Unlike the gems, which are unnaturally flawless and hardly even seem to
be made of real matter, this pectoral was clearly crafted. Not just to hold
the gems in a decorative sense, though. As close as my contacts in para-
archaeology could determine, it was created as a sort of ward, to contain the
gems' power and influence." Focusing on getting her explanation in order was
helping Maddie ignore the pain in her head and the itching in her skin.
"At the outset, there were three main working theories. One was that it
was simply a way to let anyone access at least some of the power of the gems,
and the gems were otherwise picky about who could use them. There's no
record of Professor Shade demonstrating anything like the power you girls
could access, and if it's really him still alive behind you getting the gems,
he was never paranormal but could do some magical feats. Without the
pectoral, the gems wouldn't have worked for him, maybe."
"I'm having my doubts about Shade being who he says he is, anyway,"
Julie frowned.
"True enough. Another theory was that the gems were captured from an
enemy, and the pectoral was a way to contain their power and parade it around
as a trophy. The wearer would be on the wrong side to get the goddess's
blessing, but no one else could have it either. It was an imperfect
container, though, and some power could be accessed."
Liv, who had been silently chewing her lip in the background, finally
spoke up. "But you don't believe either of those now, do you? Because we
went crazy, yah?"
Maddie shook her head, then regretted it as her vision sparked slightly.
Definitely hit her head on something. "Theory three looks to be the most
likely now. The pectoral was made to protect people from the gems. Whether
it was their original purpose or a mistake, the gems clearly make their
wearers into extreme versions of themselves. The kind of purity that is
toxic. I thought I could get you to see it in yourself and fight the
influence, and you did for a while..."
"The stupid journaling," Jess muttered.
"Right. It worked a little, but it wasn't enough. If the mere presence
of the pectoral could stop the effect, having it at the Cave should've kept
you calmer and more centered whenever you were here, but that wasn't
happening either. The gems clearly aren't coming out easily, and it's
unlikely any of you would have willingly let me try...well, Liv and Tammy
might have."
"So, you hypothesized that the interaction of the pectoral's ward with a
living spirit would enable it to fulfill its function and rein in our more
extreme personality aspects."
Everyone looked at Tammy.
"What? I talked like this before I got the gem," she shrugged, looking
a little abashed.
"True, she did," Julie nodded.
"And it feels like I hypothesized correctly. Hopefully this wasn't just
resetting the clock and you'll all go hyper-intense again in a few months,
but at least we've bought some time. If I hadn't taken the risk, some of you
would probably be dead or at best in Bathory's clutches by now," Maddie
sighed. "I'm sorry I didn't ask, or even let you know this might be a thing
I could do, but things spiraled out of control so quickly and I kept hoping
you'd hit your limits before the limits hit YOU."
"I'm not sure how much I can trust you after this," Tee frowned.
"I don't trust you at all, but I never did," Jess snorted. "And you
didn't just make us stop being totally insane, you cut our power down. A
LOT. I'd already committed to that jump, and suddenly I wasn't strong enough
to do it properly."
Maddie closed her eyes and sank back down in the cot. This must be what
Jessa felt like every day, the temptation to reach into someone and fix them,
knowing that on some level it was just plain wrong. Or what Thomas
experienced once he'd been around normal people enough to see...feel that a
lot of what he'd done as Warden was a violation of other people's minds.
"I'm sorry," Maddie finally said. "I think I'm as stuck with this as
you are with the gems, though, so we're going to have to figure out how to
make this work. Or if we can't make it work, figure out where we'll go from
here. Meanwhile, unless I was only out for a few minutes, you probably need
to get home before your parents completely freak out."

* * * *

[July 6, 2027 - The Li Residence, Chinatown, Manhattan Autonomous Sector]

The dining room table was quiet, and too empty.
A single chair was always left empty for "Day of the Lost" observances,
something the Lis had been doing for most of Julie's life. It was increasing
in "popularity" in places like Manhattan that had been hit the hardest by the
vanishings of a generation ago, but was still pretty obscure outside of
places like New York City or the Dallas diaspora.
This year, there were two empty chairs. One for the symbolic lost, and
one for the actual lost...Jiaqi.
For the first time, the observance hit Julie hard. It used to just be
something that old people were sad about, and Julie had grown up in a world
already recovering from the "false Rapture" or the "Ride of the Valkyries."
But she had a personal stake in it now.
What really tore at her heart was that she KNEW where her brother was.
That he was still alive, after a fashion, and would probably even claim to be
doing better than ever. Worse, she also knew her parents assumed that her
recent "acting out" was a reaction to not knowing where Jiaqi was either,
secrets piled on secrets.
She glanced to the head of the table, where her father Binyan sat. As
was the case for much of the remnant population of Manhattan, his job was
almost entirely online, conducted by computer screen and graycell. He
insisted on doing the family shopping, so he wouldn't forget what the Sun
looked like. Normally a friendly man, who insisted people call him Ben if
they tripped over his name, he'd been increasingly stressed the last few
years. First the uncertainty caused by the Autonomous Sector deal, and then
of course Jiaqi's disappearance.
Her mother Anxiu had always been much more reserved, even uptight, and
that had gotten worse lately. Too bad there wasn't a magical pendant to help
*her* unwind.
Would telling her parents the truth help, or only hurt more? How much
of the truth could she even reveal without giving up secrets that weren't
even hers to share? Worse, if they knew where Jiaqi was, might they...try to
DO SOMETHING about it? There was no way that would end well.
The ritual time of silence ended, but the room still felt quiet and
lonely even with the return of table chatter and news of the day.